May 25 (Bloomberg) -- Renaissance Capital, the investment
bank half-owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, is
cutting as much as 15 percent of its workforce as business
slows, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The jobs cuts are restricted to investment banking, said
the people, who declined to be named as the news hasn’t been
made public. Daria Khilenkova, a spokeswoman for RenCap in
Lagos, declined to comment by phone. The reduction was reported
earlier today by Russian news agency Interfax.

Renaissance has been facing increased competition in Russia
since OAO Sberbank, the country’s largest lender, completed the
acquisition of Troika Dialog, Moscow’s oldest investment bank,
in January. VTB Capital, a unit of Russia’s second-largest
lender, was the biggest organizer of domestic equity and debt
deals last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. RenCap
was sixth in equity and debt deals, and Troika was second, the
data show.

Renaissance Group, the parent company that includes
Renaissance Capital, said in September it cut 10 percent of its
workforce of 1,250 to “align” costs with market conditions.
The bank said on May 18 Deputy Chief Executive Officer Andrew
Cornthwaite went leave for an indeterminate period.

Standard & Poor’s on May 17 revised its outlook to
“negative” from “stable” on Renaissance’s holding company in
Bermuda, citing RenCap’s “weak earnings and the potentially
slow divestment of its large equity holdings.”